Sunday, May 31, 2009
Work in Progress
Well I'm still working on Frontiers of the Flesh although the first part is already up and ready to read. Also I'm awaiting my reply from Horror Bound magazine for the story 'Cry' which can also be read here. I've got a few other ideas up my shelve to and might take some time inbetween writting Frontiers of the Flesh and non-writing stuff to write a few smaller stories.
Frontiers of the Flesh pt. 1
This is the first part of the story Frontiers of the Flesh which I started writing towards the end of May, the second part should be up by the end of the week. Enjoy ^_^
‘Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.’
- Tennessee Williams
When Dylan and I returned to the continent of America for the first time since before the Great War we returned to a completely different country. It had been many years since the both of us left to fight in the industrialized massacre that spread across Europe like wildfire. To be honest I can’t really remember why we went now, It was so many years ago - decades. Not to mention that Dylan is no longer in this life, I have no one to ask about it.
Our roots of course were in Europe and maybe that played apart, I partial remember a discussion about returning to the land of our ancestors. We came to a land in medias res of a terrible conflict as I have said before, still even now I can’t illuminate much upon those years of foul rain, rotting trenches and mindless brutality.
After the war we went to Berlin and bought an apartment living, out our lives in the Weimar Republic mostly in secrecy. Of course during the twenties in Berlin things were rather more relaxed than before the war and one of our kind had even become a minister of some sort in the Reichstag but underneath the surface hatred against us was still there.
After a brief time attempting both painting and poetry we established ourselves within the Berlin art scene enough to pose as a homosexual couple, me the wealthy patron of Dylan’s artistic talent. Dylan was always the more creative of the two of us.
The event that forced us to leave the country and eventually the whole continent happened on the 4th of August, 1926.
The event was a party.
In the hour leading up to it I was getting changed in our bedroom while Dylan finished setting up the apartment's main room. I slipped on my long black pants, my collared shirted followed by a simple sweater and to finish it off a dark tie. While I did this in front of the person size mirror Dylan crept up behind me.
‘So Michel, ready for tonight?’
Framed in the mirror we made an odd couple. Like some of our kind our sex was hard to determine some mistaking us for womanly men others as manly women. In reality we where neither, unlike most supernaturals the Nosteratu never had any gender.
We both had dark hair although Dylan’s was truly black while mine was simply very dark brown. We had the appearance of people in their twenties although some mistook us for younger, we never aged of course. What was the point it that?
Dylan put a hand around my waist and asked again:
‘Ready for tonight Michel?’
I smiled.
‘Are you? You know the new Haldi in town is coming and a newly formed telepath that Wolf or someone found out? Then of course theirs Atwood and his new found love.’
‘That circus freak from England? Tsk and I thought Atwood could do much better.’ Dylan replied grinning a little too widely. Of course I knew about Dylan and Atwood’s previous adventures together before my ascension.
At this point their was a knock at the door and Dylan uncoupled from me to go welcome the early guest.
‘Alexander! It is good to see you, been far too long.’ I heard Dylan call out in the living room.
I finished dressing myself and walked out to greet one of our own kind and not just one of us supernaturals but a Nosteratu like me and Dylan.
When I got to the living room I could see something was wrong, the two of them were talking quietly in the corner and Alexander was silently crying. I went to ask what was going on when there was yet another knock on the door. Dylan gave me a look as I went to open it, the look told me I would be told everything later.
At the door stood Atwood and the ex-circus performer and fellow Nosteratu called Hobbes. Like Dylan and me they both had the appearance of dubious gender although also like us they had decided to dress like men to the party. Atwood brushed back the fair hair of Hobbes and gave me handshake before entering.
Soon the living room was filled with people, a young telepathic woman from Paris who worked as a psychologist, a down and out writer by the name of Joshua Williams, the nameless Haldi and a few others, warlocks, ghouls and the like.
It was all going rather well when Dylan finished talking to Haldi and came over to talk to me.
‘Alexander’s upset over something?’ I asked.
‘Alexander’s latest lover has disappeared, some of the supernaturals think it’s the fascists.’ said Dylan as a kiss was planted on my neck.
‘It’s getting dangerous here.’
‘Maybe not dangerous enough Michel.’
There was another look in Dylan’s eye and we both quietly and quickly left the party for my study.
When we returned the party is in full swing, free of the constraints usually placed upon them and urged on by alcohol the supernaturals showed off, The Haldi shape shifted to the amusement of a couple of Algol ghouls, two warlocks created beautiful illusions for one another and the young telepathy read Atwood’s mind in a corner.
‘The young telepath should watch out for herself, she’s new to it all so it hasn’t start to hit her yet but she shouldn’t use it too much you remember Eve right Dylan?’
‘Eve wasn’t that bad when we left and I’m sure she’s slowed down since the war but your right the well of the mind is only so deep and if it runs out?’
We both nodded thoughtfully and then Dylan went to check on Alexander.
It’s then that things turned ugly.
There was another knock on the door and as Hobbes goes to answer it my insides quivered oddly. I remember struggling to remember if there was anyone left to come and then seeing Hobbes open the door.
The Nosteratu never got to welcome the new arrivals. A baton cracked against Hobbes jaw and the supernatural fell to the side of the door, screaming and bleeding.
‘The party is over freaks.’
The man who stepped into the room was dressed in a smart blue semi-formal suit and gifted with sharp blue eyes and fair brown hair. He smiled enthusiastically as he kicked Hobbes (now rolling around in pain on the floor) in the ribs.
‘Well our lives are pretty much over now and the night is ruined as well’ I heard someone mutter behind me with an awkward chuckle.
There was a silent moment then as from behind the intruder a dozen trenchcoated figures entered the room armed with batons.
It is then that I recognised the first intruder as the oddly named Blaise a violent anti-supernatural campaigner and fascist sympathizer whose picture had recently been on the front page of every newspaper in Berlin. My blood dropped in temperature and then just kept on falling as Dylan and Alexander returned to the living room.
‘Well now that we have all of you here we can begin’ said Blaise as he spat on the crumbled figure of Hobbes sobbing at his feet.
‘Wait this is insane’ the telepath said as she walked towards Blaise and his henchmen.
She didn’t get very far, Blaise pulled out a revolver and shot at her.
Everything was a blur, Atwood jumped out to try and save her moving quicker than the ordinary human but not fast enough. He pulled her to the ground just as the bullet tore through her shoulder.
Then the Haldi transformed into a massive brown bear and charged at the intruders. Two of them including Blaise were fast enough to open fire on the Haldi to little affect before it descended upon them.
Blaise dropped to the ground and rolled, dodging the mass of fur and claws that engulfed one of his men behind him. He aimed his revolver at us and started firing, we dropped to the ground.
In my mind memories of the trenches, of night time assaults and gunfire threatened to take over. Glass, wood and metal smashed, splintered and broke as the bullets flew through the room. By the time Blaise had emptied his revolver Haldi finished ripping apart one of his men and now turned his attention to him.
Blaise threw his revolver on the ground and drew out a crude but sharp looking blade and waited for the Haldi to charge. In bear form the shape shifter moved quickly.
While the two of them fought in a blurred form we all rose to our feet and Dylan, Alexander and myself charged at the other men. Luckily none of them were armed with firearms and so a fast and furious fist fight broke out instead, with us the easy victors once we disarmed their batons.
Blaise’s men fled from the room at about the same time as Haldi tore into him, ripping a chuck of flesh out of his chest and throwing him across the room.
The attack seemed over but we couldn’t be sure, we had beaten them back thanks to our supernatural abilities and the good luck that Haldi had been there but against a large group with more support we could be taken down.
It was Dylan who spoke first.
‘We have to get out of here, now.’
I went to agree with him and then remembered.
‘What about the telepath and Atwood?’
Most of us appeared to have forgotten about them in the chaos, we quickly found the two of them hiding under a table, Atwood trying his best to help the telepaths should wound.
‘Atwood get her out of her, take her to one of the doctors who treats people like us.’ I said
Atwood carefully moved out from under the table with the telepath in his arms.
‘What about Hobbes?’
‘Take him with you, just get out now. The same with the rest of you’ I said turning on the rest of the party. ‘Get out, more could be here soon and even not how will we explain this?’
Everyone just looked stunned until the ghouls disappeared, teleporting as they do. Then Atwood took Hobbes and the telepath, after that most of the others wandered off. Only me, Dylan, Haldi and Alexander were left.
‘Do you need help to clean up or something?’ Said Haldi now in his human form.
I looked at him.
‘No we just need to leave, Dylan can you go back some of our stuff.’
Dylan nodded and went to our room.
Now Alexander turned away from inspected the body of Blaise and talked:
‘Where will you go? You’re not staying in Berlin are you?’
Different plans ran through my head at that point and then centred on one place.
‘Dylan and I are going back home.’
‘Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.’
- Tennessee Williams
When Dylan and I returned to the continent of America for the first time since before the Great War we returned to a completely different country. It had been many years since the both of us left to fight in the industrialized massacre that spread across Europe like wildfire. To be honest I can’t really remember why we went now, It was so many years ago - decades. Not to mention that Dylan is no longer in this life, I have no one to ask about it.
Our roots of course were in Europe and maybe that played apart, I partial remember a discussion about returning to the land of our ancestors. We came to a land in medias res of a terrible conflict as I have said before, still even now I can’t illuminate much upon those years of foul rain, rotting trenches and mindless brutality.
After the war we went to Berlin and bought an apartment living, out our lives in the Weimar Republic mostly in secrecy. Of course during the twenties in Berlin things were rather more relaxed than before the war and one of our kind had even become a minister of some sort in the Reichstag but underneath the surface hatred against us was still there.
After a brief time attempting both painting and poetry we established ourselves within the Berlin art scene enough to pose as a homosexual couple, me the wealthy patron of Dylan’s artistic talent. Dylan was always the more creative of the two of us.
The event that forced us to leave the country and eventually the whole continent happened on the 4th of August, 1926.
The event was a party.
In the hour leading up to it I was getting changed in our bedroom while Dylan finished setting up the apartment's main room. I slipped on my long black pants, my collared shirted followed by a simple sweater and to finish it off a dark tie. While I did this in front of the person size mirror Dylan crept up behind me.
‘So Michel, ready for tonight?’
Framed in the mirror we made an odd couple. Like some of our kind our sex was hard to determine some mistaking us for womanly men others as manly women. In reality we where neither, unlike most supernaturals the Nosteratu never had any gender.
We both had dark hair although Dylan’s was truly black while mine was simply very dark brown. We had the appearance of people in their twenties although some mistook us for younger, we never aged of course. What was the point it that?
Dylan put a hand around my waist and asked again:
‘Ready for tonight Michel?’
I smiled.
‘Are you? You know the new Haldi in town is coming and a newly formed telepath that Wolf or someone found out? Then of course theirs Atwood and his new found love.’
‘That circus freak from England? Tsk and I thought Atwood could do much better.’ Dylan replied grinning a little too widely. Of course I knew about Dylan and Atwood’s previous adventures together before my ascension.
At this point their was a knock at the door and Dylan uncoupled from me to go welcome the early guest.
‘Alexander! It is good to see you, been far too long.’ I heard Dylan call out in the living room.
I finished dressing myself and walked out to greet one of our own kind and not just one of us supernaturals but a Nosteratu like me and Dylan.
When I got to the living room I could see something was wrong, the two of them were talking quietly in the corner and Alexander was silently crying. I went to ask what was going on when there was yet another knock on the door. Dylan gave me a look as I went to open it, the look told me I would be told everything later.
At the door stood Atwood and the ex-circus performer and fellow Nosteratu called Hobbes. Like Dylan and me they both had the appearance of dubious gender although also like us they had decided to dress like men to the party. Atwood brushed back the fair hair of Hobbes and gave me handshake before entering.
Soon the living room was filled with people, a young telepathic woman from Paris who worked as a psychologist, a down and out writer by the name of Joshua Williams, the nameless Haldi and a few others, warlocks, ghouls and the like.
It was all going rather well when Dylan finished talking to Haldi and came over to talk to me.
‘Alexander’s upset over something?’ I asked.
‘Alexander’s latest lover has disappeared, some of the supernaturals think it’s the fascists.’ said Dylan as a kiss was planted on my neck.
‘It’s getting dangerous here.’
‘Maybe not dangerous enough Michel.’
There was another look in Dylan’s eye and we both quietly and quickly left the party for my study.
When we returned the party is in full swing, free of the constraints usually placed upon them and urged on by alcohol the supernaturals showed off, The Haldi shape shifted to the amusement of a couple of Algol ghouls, two warlocks created beautiful illusions for one another and the young telepathy read Atwood’s mind in a corner.
‘The young telepath should watch out for herself, she’s new to it all so it hasn’t start to hit her yet but she shouldn’t use it too much you remember Eve right Dylan?’
‘Eve wasn’t that bad when we left and I’m sure she’s slowed down since the war but your right the well of the mind is only so deep and if it runs out?’
We both nodded thoughtfully and then Dylan went to check on Alexander.
It’s then that things turned ugly.
There was another knock on the door and as Hobbes goes to answer it my insides quivered oddly. I remember struggling to remember if there was anyone left to come and then seeing Hobbes open the door.
The Nosteratu never got to welcome the new arrivals. A baton cracked against Hobbes jaw and the supernatural fell to the side of the door, screaming and bleeding.
‘The party is over freaks.’
The man who stepped into the room was dressed in a smart blue semi-formal suit and gifted with sharp blue eyes and fair brown hair. He smiled enthusiastically as he kicked Hobbes (now rolling around in pain on the floor) in the ribs.
‘Well our lives are pretty much over now and the night is ruined as well’ I heard someone mutter behind me with an awkward chuckle.
There was a silent moment then as from behind the intruder a dozen trenchcoated figures entered the room armed with batons.
It is then that I recognised the first intruder as the oddly named Blaise a violent anti-supernatural campaigner and fascist sympathizer whose picture had recently been on the front page of every newspaper in Berlin. My blood dropped in temperature and then just kept on falling as Dylan and Alexander returned to the living room.
‘Well now that we have all of you here we can begin’ said Blaise as he spat on the crumbled figure of Hobbes sobbing at his feet.
‘Wait this is insane’ the telepath said as she walked towards Blaise and his henchmen.
She didn’t get very far, Blaise pulled out a revolver and shot at her.
Everything was a blur, Atwood jumped out to try and save her moving quicker than the ordinary human but not fast enough. He pulled her to the ground just as the bullet tore through her shoulder.
Then the Haldi transformed into a massive brown bear and charged at the intruders. Two of them including Blaise were fast enough to open fire on the Haldi to little affect before it descended upon them.
Blaise dropped to the ground and rolled, dodging the mass of fur and claws that engulfed one of his men behind him. He aimed his revolver at us and started firing, we dropped to the ground.
In my mind memories of the trenches, of night time assaults and gunfire threatened to take over. Glass, wood and metal smashed, splintered and broke as the bullets flew through the room. By the time Blaise had emptied his revolver Haldi finished ripping apart one of his men and now turned his attention to him.
Blaise threw his revolver on the ground and drew out a crude but sharp looking blade and waited for the Haldi to charge. In bear form the shape shifter moved quickly.
While the two of them fought in a blurred form we all rose to our feet and Dylan, Alexander and myself charged at the other men. Luckily none of them were armed with firearms and so a fast and furious fist fight broke out instead, with us the easy victors once we disarmed their batons.
Blaise’s men fled from the room at about the same time as Haldi tore into him, ripping a chuck of flesh out of his chest and throwing him across the room.
The attack seemed over but we couldn’t be sure, we had beaten them back thanks to our supernatural abilities and the good luck that Haldi had been there but against a large group with more support we could be taken down.
It was Dylan who spoke first.
‘We have to get out of here, now.’
I went to agree with him and then remembered.
‘What about the telepath and Atwood?’
Most of us appeared to have forgotten about them in the chaos, we quickly found the two of them hiding under a table, Atwood trying his best to help the telepaths should wound.
‘Atwood get her out of her, take her to one of the doctors who treats people like us.’ I said
Atwood carefully moved out from under the table with the telepath in his arms.
‘What about Hobbes?’
‘Take him with you, just get out now. The same with the rest of you’ I said turning on the rest of the party. ‘Get out, more could be here soon and even not how will we explain this?’
Everyone just looked stunned until the ghouls disappeared, teleporting as they do. Then Atwood took Hobbes and the telepath, after that most of the others wandered off. Only me, Dylan, Haldi and Alexander were left.
‘Do you need help to clean up or something?’ Said Haldi now in his human form.
I looked at him.
‘No we just need to leave, Dylan can you go back some of our stuff.’
Dylan nodded and went to our room.
Now Alexander turned away from inspected the body of Blaise and talked:
‘Where will you go? You’re not staying in Berlin are you?’
Different plans ran through my head at that point and then centred on one place.
‘Dylan and I are going back home.’
Friday, May 29, 2009
Work in Progress
I'm currently working on a longish short story called Frontiers of the Flesh which so far has themes of vampirism, sexuality, oppression, life in exile, travel and violence. It's about two supernatural vampire-like creatures Dylan and Michel and their life in the post-world war one world.
The first part should be up soon!
The first part should be up soon!
Cry pt 2
This is the second part of the story Cry, the first part can be found in the achives. This story I wrote during May 2009 and is currently under doing the rounds through a couple of magazines trying to find a home.. It was originally called Servant to the Star and then I Didn't Cry.
II
Lets skip ahead a bit to when I went to high school, it wasn't until then that they returned to ask for me to fulfil my pact to the star.
It was during high summer, I was just getting to be comfortable around some new friends I had made earlier that year. We hung around at one of their houses, smoking pot, listening to alternative rock from the 90’s. We were total 90’s junkies and japanophiles as well I remember. You know anime, manga, nine inches, manson, bret easton ellis and that archaist guy chuck whatshisface.
It was hanging around these new friends of mine that I got introduced to Dylan Acker. A faired haired wanna be nihilist poet with a snarky self loathing attitude, what can I say he hooked me instantly.
And somewhere deep inside I must have heard those bastard ghouls laughing away.
I was sitting out on the patio of his house listening to him read out some of his (what I now realize god awful) poems.
He was in a daze of his own creativity, drunk on his own half baked meaningful words. As I watched him I heard a voice in my head:
This little treat of yours Julian, he's the one. Do it or your birther rots in hell if your lucky, you as well if your not.
Dylan? Why?
No answer, not even laughter. As soon as I heard the voice I knew what I had to do they had told me all those years ago in the cemetery, occasionally they had talked to me over the years even visited me once or twice in my room at night. They had shown me in my dreams what must be done, the preparations necessary for them to bypass the barrier of the spirit.
‘Hey want a drink Dylan?’
My light haired angel awoke from his self obsessed state and with a wicked grin answered my question.
‘My mums got some bourbon stashed behind the breadbin, mix it with the coke in the fridge or maybe the freezer I forget.’
I walk inside the house, my bare feet feeling numb on the cool wooden panels of the dinning room. Once inside the kitchen I easily find the bourbon and the coke (in the freezer). From the shadowy entrance to the bathroom I see a figure gesturing to me faintly. Then a decaying hand juts from the darkness and places a bottle of unidentifiable liquid on the floor. What was it? I don't remember and it doesn't really matter does it? I knew what it would do, what it was to be used for and I used it.
The next couple of minutes are a bit of a blur in my memory, me walking back outside with the drinks in hand, giving Dylan his, watching him show off by downing as much as he can as quickly as he can, now he's collapsed in the corner of the dinning room, I’m rolling him back outside onto the patio, rummaging through his bedroom for some cheap paints, painting a glyph on his head, pushing him off the patio into the garden below.
Then I’m staring up at the demon star above me trying desperately not to hear the sounds of the ghouls lips smacking together, struggling not to look down and catch a glimpse of someone being devoured.
No one ever found his body, the ghouls made sure of that.
No one ever suspected me, I suppose they must have had a hand in that too.
Is a little bit of explanation needed?
The pact was simple in its barbarity and cruelty.
These ghouls of the night couldn’t feed on the conscious living and hated feeding on the already decayed bodies of the dead. They could however feed upon people who are unconscious and have had what the ghouls call their ‘soul barriers’ disabled. This doesn’t take much, another human simply has to paint a symbol of their head while they are unconscious.
They would pick out the people they wanted I would get them unconscious and draw the symbol, they would devour the body and the evidence.
They left me again for awhile at the time I wasn’t too sure why they didn’t use me as much as possible.
At any rate it wasn’t until I had left high school and moved further into the city that they returned seeking to renew my pact again.
It all started (or restarted) with me deciding that it would be easier if I shaved before going to bed that night rather than the next morning before work. It was of course about two o’clock in the morning but that did little to stop me. I was living in a fairly dingy apartment, one bedroom, a living/dinning/kitchen rolled into one and a bathroom.
In the bathroom I found myself struggling, maybe it was the hour or the various substances still flowing through my blood, in the end I had a patchwork of cuts. I started to feel sick, the metallic tang of the shaving cream reminding me off the alcohol I had previously consumed. I remember telling myself not to faint, not to vomit and then a hand extend in aid from the mirror.
Yes another undead limb appearing before me, this time it flowed out of the mirror.
‘Now, now little one you must look your best. You’ve got a visitor coming soon, the star has seen her coming and she is ours.’
I nodded.
‘You don't understand yet but you will and you will do it. You always cared more for him than her at least that‘s what you said to all your friends right? Knock, knock Julian.’
A knock at my door of course and when I open the door-
‘Mother?’
III
‘On the run hey?’
One of the ghoul’s said this as he materialized out of the cheap motel’s television set. In the fading light coming through the window and the fake brightness from the lamp it appears less frightening more like a decaying corpse- pathetic really. Little more than a rotting meat puppet on invisible strings.
‘Of course I am! Because of you, the three of you. Where are the other two by the way?’
The ghoul’s head cracks as it rolls right around, disconnecting and then reconnecting to the spinal column before answering.
‘On important business you know, finding someone to replace you I think.’
‘Replace me?’
The ghoul eyes me, or it would if it had any.
‘I thought you would be pleased, usually this lasts longer sometimes until death. Your getting off early although not for good behaviour. Now you can live the rest of your life.’
‘In a prison cell!’ I remember screaming that at the creature and being disturbed that it didn’t really react.
‘Well, they might hang you instead? Do they still do that here?’
‘Why didn’t you get rid of her entire body? Huh? Was it you who told the police? Was it?’
The ghoul contemplated this and then appeared to shrug.
‘I did what you and the other two asked me to do! Even though it was insane, crazy-’
‘Why did you do it little one?’
I stared at the thing before me then for what seemed like decades.
‘You killed your first real love and the one from whom you sprung. All for an already dead father? Not even a father at that. It doesn’t really seem to make much sense to me and I’ve sat here since the dawn of time watching the random chaos rumbling towards the present.’
Dumbfounding I picked up the desk lamp and threw it at the ghoul. It exploded before it even touched it, silently showering pieces of plastic and metal everywhere.
‘See that was a reaction to something, it had purpose and although I generally adhere to the principles of no principles I would like to see what lays underneath your actions because I think they have purpose just purpose veiled.’
The ghoul seemed to be examining me and thinking about what it should say, how it should present whatever it would say to me.
‘I don’t understand what you mean you stupid corpse, I did that to those people although I didn’t really do much to them that was left up to you. But I did that stuff to them because it would save my stepfather whom I loved and most likely myself from having our souls and bodies devoured by your trio.’
The ghoul answered quickly.
‘No, that's not it.’
Silence for awhile and then the ghoul broke it.
‘What was your real blood father like? Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know, no one that's left of my family talk about it much. Once I found some photographs of him, he looked sad and I think foreign. Maybe that’s why they didn’t like him but really that's just guessing I don’t know.’
The ghoul nodded, then started to cough violently spraying what I presume to be some of my mothers blood onto the floor.
There was a knock on the door.
The ghoul disappeared suddenly and I walked over to see who is outside.
A motel maids with my rather disgusting looking dinner, a combination of slush and slop.
She handed it too me and I kicked the door shut behind me.
The ghoul returned now that she is out of sight.
It grinned awkwardly at me.
I took a slip of the drink that came with my dinner and then turned my attention to our discussion from before.
‘So why do you think I did it huh?’
‘I don’t think that really matters much anymore actually.’
I tried to ask why but it is then that I collapsed to the floor.
My veins pulsed, my body and my mind slipped from one another.
On the floor during the last seconds of my life I saw the other two ghouls walk into the room and with them the maid. She has a paint brush in her hand and trembles as she approaches me. I try to tell her to stop, try to tell her that its a horrible thing to take my life but even if I could have said that, should I have?
IV
I don’t really know why I’m telling you this, I doubt you care with those hungry eyes of yours, anyway the past doesn’t really matter that much down here does it.
But I will tell you this before you devour me and then give birth to me and then devour me again.
I don’t think I really ever liked my stepfather that much, I didn’t feel anything when he died and that I think is why I didn’t cry.
II
Lets skip ahead a bit to when I went to high school, it wasn't until then that they returned to ask for me to fulfil my pact to the star.
It was during high summer, I was just getting to be comfortable around some new friends I had made earlier that year. We hung around at one of their houses, smoking pot, listening to alternative rock from the 90’s. We were total 90’s junkies and japanophiles as well I remember. You know anime, manga, nine inches, manson, bret easton ellis and that archaist guy chuck whatshisface.
It was hanging around these new friends of mine that I got introduced to Dylan Acker. A faired haired wanna be nihilist poet with a snarky self loathing attitude, what can I say he hooked me instantly.
And somewhere deep inside I must have heard those bastard ghouls laughing away.
I was sitting out on the patio of his house listening to him read out some of his (what I now realize god awful) poems.
He was in a daze of his own creativity, drunk on his own half baked meaningful words. As I watched him I heard a voice in my head:
This little treat of yours Julian, he's the one. Do it or your birther rots in hell if your lucky, you as well if your not.
Dylan? Why?
No answer, not even laughter. As soon as I heard the voice I knew what I had to do they had told me all those years ago in the cemetery, occasionally they had talked to me over the years even visited me once or twice in my room at night. They had shown me in my dreams what must be done, the preparations necessary for them to bypass the barrier of the spirit.
‘Hey want a drink Dylan?’
My light haired angel awoke from his self obsessed state and with a wicked grin answered my question.
‘My mums got some bourbon stashed behind the breadbin, mix it with the coke in the fridge or maybe the freezer I forget.’
I walk inside the house, my bare feet feeling numb on the cool wooden panels of the dinning room. Once inside the kitchen I easily find the bourbon and the coke (in the freezer). From the shadowy entrance to the bathroom I see a figure gesturing to me faintly. Then a decaying hand juts from the darkness and places a bottle of unidentifiable liquid on the floor. What was it? I don't remember and it doesn't really matter does it? I knew what it would do, what it was to be used for and I used it.
The next couple of minutes are a bit of a blur in my memory, me walking back outside with the drinks in hand, giving Dylan his, watching him show off by downing as much as he can as quickly as he can, now he's collapsed in the corner of the dinning room, I’m rolling him back outside onto the patio, rummaging through his bedroom for some cheap paints, painting a glyph on his head, pushing him off the patio into the garden below.
Then I’m staring up at the demon star above me trying desperately not to hear the sounds of the ghouls lips smacking together, struggling not to look down and catch a glimpse of someone being devoured.
No one ever found his body, the ghouls made sure of that.
No one ever suspected me, I suppose they must have had a hand in that too.
Is a little bit of explanation needed?
The pact was simple in its barbarity and cruelty.
These ghouls of the night couldn’t feed on the conscious living and hated feeding on the already decayed bodies of the dead. They could however feed upon people who are unconscious and have had what the ghouls call their ‘soul barriers’ disabled. This doesn’t take much, another human simply has to paint a symbol of their head while they are unconscious.
They would pick out the people they wanted I would get them unconscious and draw the symbol, they would devour the body and the evidence.
They left me again for awhile at the time I wasn’t too sure why they didn’t use me as much as possible.
At any rate it wasn’t until I had left high school and moved further into the city that they returned seeking to renew my pact again.
It all started (or restarted) with me deciding that it would be easier if I shaved before going to bed that night rather than the next morning before work. It was of course about two o’clock in the morning but that did little to stop me. I was living in a fairly dingy apartment, one bedroom, a living/dinning/kitchen rolled into one and a bathroom.
In the bathroom I found myself struggling, maybe it was the hour or the various substances still flowing through my blood, in the end I had a patchwork of cuts. I started to feel sick, the metallic tang of the shaving cream reminding me off the alcohol I had previously consumed. I remember telling myself not to faint, not to vomit and then a hand extend in aid from the mirror.
Yes another undead limb appearing before me, this time it flowed out of the mirror.
‘Now, now little one you must look your best. You’ve got a visitor coming soon, the star has seen her coming and she is ours.’
I nodded.
‘You don't understand yet but you will and you will do it. You always cared more for him than her at least that‘s what you said to all your friends right? Knock, knock Julian.’
A knock at my door of course and when I open the door-
‘Mother?’
III
‘On the run hey?’
One of the ghoul’s said this as he materialized out of the cheap motel’s television set. In the fading light coming through the window and the fake brightness from the lamp it appears less frightening more like a decaying corpse- pathetic really. Little more than a rotting meat puppet on invisible strings.
‘Of course I am! Because of you, the three of you. Where are the other two by the way?’
The ghoul’s head cracks as it rolls right around, disconnecting and then reconnecting to the spinal column before answering.
‘On important business you know, finding someone to replace you I think.’
‘Replace me?’
The ghoul eyes me, or it would if it had any.
‘I thought you would be pleased, usually this lasts longer sometimes until death. Your getting off early although not for good behaviour. Now you can live the rest of your life.’
‘In a prison cell!’ I remember screaming that at the creature and being disturbed that it didn’t really react.
‘Well, they might hang you instead? Do they still do that here?’
‘Why didn’t you get rid of her entire body? Huh? Was it you who told the police? Was it?’
The ghoul contemplated this and then appeared to shrug.
‘I did what you and the other two asked me to do! Even though it was insane, crazy-’
‘Why did you do it little one?’
I stared at the thing before me then for what seemed like decades.
‘You killed your first real love and the one from whom you sprung. All for an already dead father? Not even a father at that. It doesn’t really seem to make much sense to me and I’ve sat here since the dawn of time watching the random chaos rumbling towards the present.’
Dumbfounding I picked up the desk lamp and threw it at the ghoul. It exploded before it even touched it, silently showering pieces of plastic and metal everywhere.
‘See that was a reaction to something, it had purpose and although I generally adhere to the principles of no principles I would like to see what lays underneath your actions because I think they have purpose just purpose veiled.’
The ghoul seemed to be examining me and thinking about what it should say, how it should present whatever it would say to me.
‘I don’t understand what you mean you stupid corpse, I did that to those people although I didn’t really do much to them that was left up to you. But I did that stuff to them because it would save my stepfather whom I loved and most likely myself from having our souls and bodies devoured by your trio.’
The ghoul answered quickly.
‘No, that's not it.’
Silence for awhile and then the ghoul broke it.
‘What was your real blood father like? Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know, no one that's left of my family talk about it much. Once I found some photographs of him, he looked sad and I think foreign. Maybe that’s why they didn’t like him but really that's just guessing I don’t know.’
The ghoul nodded, then started to cough violently spraying what I presume to be some of my mothers blood onto the floor.
There was a knock on the door.
The ghoul disappeared suddenly and I walked over to see who is outside.
A motel maids with my rather disgusting looking dinner, a combination of slush and slop.
She handed it too me and I kicked the door shut behind me.
The ghoul returned now that she is out of sight.
It grinned awkwardly at me.
I took a slip of the drink that came with my dinner and then turned my attention to our discussion from before.
‘So why do you think I did it huh?’
‘I don’t think that really matters much anymore actually.’
I tried to ask why but it is then that I collapsed to the floor.
My veins pulsed, my body and my mind slipped from one another.
On the floor during the last seconds of my life I saw the other two ghouls walk into the room and with them the maid. She has a paint brush in her hand and trembles as she approaches me. I try to tell her to stop, try to tell her that its a horrible thing to take my life but even if I could have said that, should I have?
IV
I don’t really know why I’m telling you this, I doubt you care with those hungry eyes of yours, anyway the past doesn’t really matter that much down here does it.
But I will tell you this before you devour me and then give birth to me and then devour me again.
I don’t think I really ever liked my stepfather that much, I didn’t feel anything when he died and that I think is why I didn’t cry.
Cry pt 1
This story I wrote during May 2009 and is currently under doing the rounds through a couple of magazines trying to find a home.. It was originally called Servant to the Star and then I Didn't Cry.
But even after admitting this- and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed- and coming face-to-face with these truths about myself, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing ...
- Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
I
It’s hard really to pick out where it all started, the events seem to link together running along like an unbreakable chain each stage fitting nicely together with the one before it. I suppose though all our pasts look like that upon reflection, free will in our younger selves appears to dissipate and we forget the choices which were once open to us.
I suppose though that one has to grasp onto the events somewhere in order to begin and I like to think of it beginning in Saint Josephs Church sometime during midwinter. I should remember the day I suppose, the date of the funeral of ones stepfather is a cruel milestone of course. I was young however, thirteen in fact and dates didn't seem to concern you when your that young.
Anyway it was the day of the funeral of my stepfather Charles Mori whose last name I had cheerfully adopted after my mother had married him. I loved him in many ways, more than my blood parents anyhow. He was interesting and subtly creative, a writer in his youth of pulp science fiction stories - later in life a fairly well paid electrician.
Then of course he died.
It wasn’t tragic in a dateline story way, nor was it a crime in a homicide way. Although to me it still seems a low tragedy and a crime against me. It was however nothing special, one night he went out for a couple of drinks at the local beachside pub. Sometime earlier in the day he had been complaining about a pinch in his arm but ended up ignoring it. After downing a couple of drinks with his friends he had gone to the bathroom and he never came out again alive. He collapsed, a blood clot developed and killed him.
Then next morning I awoke to hear a voices talking out in the living room. A friend of mine, a young catholic kid named Alexander had stayed over that night and I woke him up as I climbed out of bed. I silently gestured to him to be quite and we both crept over to my door and opened it slightly.
In the seaside themed living room complete with a boat shaped bookshelf and fake oars hanging above the television sat my mother who was talking to a police officer. They were two officers actually, one lurking near the front door while his partner talked to my mum. I can’t remember exactly what they said now but I recall the basics of it. Something had happened last night to my stepfather and that was why he hadn’t come home. I do remember my mother nodding along though, just repeating that same stiff nod again and again.
I closed my door and Alexander fell in behind me, he went to his knees and started praying. I remember look at him angrily as he mumbled the words and then walking over to him and shiftily smacking him across the face. I said something sharp afterwards and then started pacing my room while my friend looked on shocked.
Then we heard the police officer's leave and I turned to him and said ‘something's happened Alex’ and he replied with something like ‘It will be okay Julian’.
It wasn't.
The rest two and half months are blank, white as the snow which began to fall around the time of the funeral.
We got there early, driving down to the church although it was just at the end of our street. I drove with a bunch of my stepfathers close relatives from his home England. I looked at them vainly hoping to catch glimpses of him in them. He was so unlike them though, Charles was kinda scruffy but soft. All these people seemed as hard as stone or tidy and neutral.
Even then the reality of it all hadn’t hit me and the funeral didn’t do much to help that but then funerals aren’t about the reality of the situation. They are a masquerade, a fantastic facade that do not honour the dead but put on a show for the living.
I stood in the first row with my mother next to me and one of her close friends on my other side. The priest got up and sermonized, giving the whole thing a degree of legitimacy for if this was escapism at least it was approved by the almighty.
People grieved and I noticed that the church was filled with people, even Alexander had come despite me ignoring him since that cruel morning. I saw my mother weeping silently and others around me doing the same. I turned my mind and memory to my stepfather, I thought about everything that he was that he could have been to me.
I didn’t cry at all during the funeral. Afterwards someone commented saying it showed how brave I was, I wanted to hit that person.
I waited outside the church as everyone left, they where going to go bury the body somewhere else at Easton Cemetery. My mother came up to me with tears still in her eyes and said: ‘honey, Alexander and his family have asked if you want to go around theirs for the rest of the day?’
It’s later that night that I wished I hadn’t gone around Alexander’s. I mean it was nice and all but it was then that I started regretting not crying at the funeral, it was then that I decided that I was going to sneak out to Easton Cemetery. I knew I would never be able to cry with others around me watching like my mother and her friends or my stepfathers relatives.
So that night after returning home from Alexander’s I went to bed and waited until my mother had her couple of glasses of wine and did the same.
It wasn’t hard sneaking out with my mother in a drunken slumber, I just used the front door.
I would have rode down to the cemetery but I had always been pretty crap at riding bikes so I took the harder option of a twenty minute walk.
As I approached the locked iron gates off the cemetery a fell star shined above me. It cast the whole gothic site in a red haze making me more than a little nervous. Only as I was clambering up and over the fence did the fact that I was sneaking into a cemetery in the dead of the night really hit me.
The stories of the ungrateful dead, decaying acropolises, meddling necromancers and ghastly shades flowered in my imagination. Fake terrors all I thought and shook the thoughts from my mind as my feet touched the strange earth.
I knew where my stepfather would be buried, right next to his twin sister who had died when they where both not even a year old.
In the end at least they are together I thought as I came upon the gravestones. The words carved on the stone did little to break through my dazed perception that this was somehow all a dream. That I would return home and sleep only to wake and find him alive again making breakfast for me and my mother perhaps.
It was as I stood, digging deep inside of my mind and trying to cry that I was interrupted. The first thing I remember noticing out of the ordinary was the bells chiming in the not so distant distance. It took a couple of seconds of them sounding to remember or more accurately fail to remember their being any bells in the cemetery.
Then that star above me turned a dark red and from behind the gravestone of my stepfather a figure crawled into my sight.
It mostly stayed in the darkness behind the stone dedication but what I saw horrified me enough. A limb of blackened flesh wrapped around a bony arm, a part of its foot sticking out into the red light all rotting and without toenails. Around where its head would be I could just faintly make out two dark orbs, its eyes watching me.
‘Don’t cry.’
As the words past out of the creatures lips I realized that I had indeed started crying.
‘Little mortal bag of meat what are you doing out here so late, we watched you we did from the night hoping you might leave us to our work.’
It was then that I saw movement in the corner of my eyes to my left and right. Two more of the creatures stood mostly in the darkness on either side.
‘We wish little one to feast.’
I managed to stutter back.
‘On me?’
Laughter in the cemetery.
‘No little unsmart one, on the buried ones beneath you.’
The one in front of me motioned its head vaguely towards my stepfathers gravesite.
‘You can’t, I came here to cry for him. To say a final goodbye.’
‘You have already cried, so make your goodbye quick. We want his flesh, we want his soul. Divided in three and down inside of us who are one.’
I stared up at the star above us, angry and blinding.
‘Does the demon star disturb you? Algol is it’s name, our birther. Was the dead one your birther?’
‘Yes, well no - no really but in the end he was.’
‘We see.’
The three creatures gather start to whisper, I can still remember what it sounded like- well at least kinda. I don’t know what they said but afterwards-
‘You can keep the body of your somewhat birther intact along with his soul in exchange for a pact.’
‘A pact with you?’
‘With the star.’
I remember looking back at his name engraved there, feeling the shame at not being able to cry without the interference of these monsters and what it would feel like to know I couldn’t save what was left.
‘What sort of pact?’
But even after admitting this- and I have, countless times, in just about every act I've committed- and coming face-to-face with these truths about myself, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing ...
- Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
I
It’s hard really to pick out where it all started, the events seem to link together running along like an unbreakable chain each stage fitting nicely together with the one before it. I suppose though all our pasts look like that upon reflection, free will in our younger selves appears to dissipate and we forget the choices which were once open to us.
I suppose though that one has to grasp onto the events somewhere in order to begin and I like to think of it beginning in Saint Josephs Church sometime during midwinter. I should remember the day I suppose, the date of the funeral of ones stepfather is a cruel milestone of course. I was young however, thirteen in fact and dates didn't seem to concern you when your that young.
Anyway it was the day of the funeral of my stepfather Charles Mori whose last name I had cheerfully adopted after my mother had married him. I loved him in many ways, more than my blood parents anyhow. He was interesting and subtly creative, a writer in his youth of pulp science fiction stories - later in life a fairly well paid electrician.
Then of course he died.
It wasn’t tragic in a dateline story way, nor was it a crime in a homicide way. Although to me it still seems a low tragedy and a crime against me. It was however nothing special, one night he went out for a couple of drinks at the local beachside pub. Sometime earlier in the day he had been complaining about a pinch in his arm but ended up ignoring it. After downing a couple of drinks with his friends he had gone to the bathroom and he never came out again alive. He collapsed, a blood clot developed and killed him.
Then next morning I awoke to hear a voices talking out in the living room. A friend of mine, a young catholic kid named Alexander had stayed over that night and I woke him up as I climbed out of bed. I silently gestured to him to be quite and we both crept over to my door and opened it slightly.
In the seaside themed living room complete with a boat shaped bookshelf and fake oars hanging above the television sat my mother who was talking to a police officer. They were two officers actually, one lurking near the front door while his partner talked to my mum. I can’t remember exactly what they said now but I recall the basics of it. Something had happened last night to my stepfather and that was why he hadn’t come home. I do remember my mother nodding along though, just repeating that same stiff nod again and again.
I closed my door and Alexander fell in behind me, he went to his knees and started praying. I remember look at him angrily as he mumbled the words and then walking over to him and shiftily smacking him across the face. I said something sharp afterwards and then started pacing my room while my friend looked on shocked.
Then we heard the police officer's leave and I turned to him and said ‘something's happened Alex’ and he replied with something like ‘It will be okay Julian’.
It wasn't.
The rest two and half months are blank, white as the snow which began to fall around the time of the funeral.
We got there early, driving down to the church although it was just at the end of our street. I drove with a bunch of my stepfathers close relatives from his home England. I looked at them vainly hoping to catch glimpses of him in them. He was so unlike them though, Charles was kinda scruffy but soft. All these people seemed as hard as stone or tidy and neutral.
Even then the reality of it all hadn’t hit me and the funeral didn’t do much to help that but then funerals aren’t about the reality of the situation. They are a masquerade, a fantastic facade that do not honour the dead but put on a show for the living.
I stood in the first row with my mother next to me and one of her close friends on my other side. The priest got up and sermonized, giving the whole thing a degree of legitimacy for if this was escapism at least it was approved by the almighty.
People grieved and I noticed that the church was filled with people, even Alexander had come despite me ignoring him since that cruel morning. I saw my mother weeping silently and others around me doing the same. I turned my mind and memory to my stepfather, I thought about everything that he was that he could have been to me.
I didn’t cry at all during the funeral. Afterwards someone commented saying it showed how brave I was, I wanted to hit that person.
I waited outside the church as everyone left, they where going to go bury the body somewhere else at Easton Cemetery. My mother came up to me with tears still in her eyes and said: ‘honey, Alexander and his family have asked if you want to go around theirs for the rest of the day?’
It’s later that night that I wished I hadn’t gone around Alexander’s. I mean it was nice and all but it was then that I started regretting not crying at the funeral, it was then that I decided that I was going to sneak out to Easton Cemetery. I knew I would never be able to cry with others around me watching like my mother and her friends or my stepfathers relatives.
So that night after returning home from Alexander’s I went to bed and waited until my mother had her couple of glasses of wine and did the same.
It wasn’t hard sneaking out with my mother in a drunken slumber, I just used the front door.
I would have rode down to the cemetery but I had always been pretty crap at riding bikes so I took the harder option of a twenty minute walk.
As I approached the locked iron gates off the cemetery a fell star shined above me. It cast the whole gothic site in a red haze making me more than a little nervous. Only as I was clambering up and over the fence did the fact that I was sneaking into a cemetery in the dead of the night really hit me.
The stories of the ungrateful dead, decaying acropolises, meddling necromancers and ghastly shades flowered in my imagination. Fake terrors all I thought and shook the thoughts from my mind as my feet touched the strange earth.
I knew where my stepfather would be buried, right next to his twin sister who had died when they where both not even a year old.
In the end at least they are together I thought as I came upon the gravestones. The words carved on the stone did little to break through my dazed perception that this was somehow all a dream. That I would return home and sleep only to wake and find him alive again making breakfast for me and my mother perhaps.
It was as I stood, digging deep inside of my mind and trying to cry that I was interrupted. The first thing I remember noticing out of the ordinary was the bells chiming in the not so distant distance. It took a couple of seconds of them sounding to remember or more accurately fail to remember their being any bells in the cemetery.
Then that star above me turned a dark red and from behind the gravestone of my stepfather a figure crawled into my sight.
It mostly stayed in the darkness behind the stone dedication but what I saw horrified me enough. A limb of blackened flesh wrapped around a bony arm, a part of its foot sticking out into the red light all rotting and without toenails. Around where its head would be I could just faintly make out two dark orbs, its eyes watching me.
‘Don’t cry.’
As the words past out of the creatures lips I realized that I had indeed started crying.
‘Little mortal bag of meat what are you doing out here so late, we watched you we did from the night hoping you might leave us to our work.’
It was then that I saw movement in the corner of my eyes to my left and right. Two more of the creatures stood mostly in the darkness on either side.
‘We wish little one to feast.’
I managed to stutter back.
‘On me?’
Laughter in the cemetery.
‘No little unsmart one, on the buried ones beneath you.’
The one in front of me motioned its head vaguely towards my stepfathers gravesite.
‘You can’t, I came here to cry for him. To say a final goodbye.’
‘You have already cried, so make your goodbye quick. We want his flesh, we want his soul. Divided in three and down inside of us who are one.’
I stared up at the star above us, angry and blinding.
‘Does the demon star disturb you? Algol is it’s name, our birther. Was the dead one your birther?’
‘Yes, well no - no really but in the end he was.’
‘We see.’
The three creatures gather start to whisper, I can still remember what it sounded like- well at least kinda. I don’t know what they said but afterwards-
‘You can keep the body of your somewhat birther intact along with his soul in exchange for a pact.’
‘A pact with you?’
‘With the star.’
I remember looking back at his name engraved there, feeling the shame at not being able to cry without the interference of these monsters and what it would feel like to know I couldn’t save what was left.
‘What sort of pact?’
Violent Melodies pt 2
This is ths second part of Violent Melodies, the first part can be found in the archives. I wrote this story during July of 2008 and it appeared in Horror Bound Online Magazine Volume 1 Issue 1 (which can be found here: http://www.horrorbound.com/readarticle.php?article_id=20) during the same month.
At first I ignored the message and the strange stirring in my heart that accompanied it after I had finished reading. I went back to University and tried to find some more part-time work but always there lingered some sense of foreboding. One day I turned up to the university lecture room only to feel suddenly ill. Every job interview I went to was futile and unsuccessful and my friends found themselves uneasy in my presence. I began to spend long hours wandering about, taking walks all around the city, even during the heaviest down pour. Then I got sick with a mysterious virus that seemed to linger on.
Within time, I started listening to the blank disc again. The voices had returned and although still uninterpretable were growing louder and increasing in quantity. Eventually I began to hear the noises or voices- whatever it was, everywhere and anywhere. They seemed to fuse to the noise of the city itself and only I could hear them.
Finally I begged my sister for the cash I needed. I told her that I was chasing after some girl or some other shit like that.
I had fled to where civilisation melts with chaos. But to be honest I can’t tell the difference anymore, for the horrors of the urban sprawl are just as terrifying as those of the empty township. From Mexico City do I write this tale, and it is here that things get truly weird. I thought I would warn you. Warn you to stop reading to go back to your sheltered lives of security and safety for as long as you can, for even now I am unsure that mankind can stop what is coming. The story must go on however, there must be an ending. Yes, in time all must come to an end.
I arrived in Berlin during June. I can’t remember exactly when anymore, time is (at least to me) becoming more flexible and so less real. It was raining, that I remember clearly, thick and oily it was and it seemed to pollute everything. The clouds above hung heavy and always had more to unleash.
As soon as I left the plane I could feel a vibration go through me. It spread up my feet and tapped into my spine. I just followed the beat, even while a part of my mind screamed not to.
As I approached the train station near the airport, the floor felt as though it was trembling with the unrecognisable noise. The drumming (or what I now thought was drumming, or at least best described as such) brought me underground and onto one of the trains. It kept me on the train, passing through endless corridors of ancient railroad track, until we got to the second last stop.
It was a particularly seedy looking station, all moss and broken tiles but the call beckoned me onto the station platform. I walked up a skeletal corpse of a staircase and into the Berlin streets above.
It was then that the noise started to become a melody. Haunting and ethereal with an undercurrent of something else - hatred. And as I entered the Berlin streets (the buildings hugging close to me, as if to embrace), I found the source of the melody.
It was a nightclub.
Crammed in-between a seedy looking bar and an adult bookstore, the place was called The Equinox and as far as I was concerned this was the heart of a heartless world. From out of its crudely cut entrance (purposely I presume to give it an air of primal danger) came the beat that had ensnared me since landing in Berlin and whose echo I had heard in far off Australia.
Now I was at the source, and I had no idea of what to do.
It was then that I felt a hand clasp my shoulder, temporarily distracting me from the unnatural composition. He was dressed in an array of grey, green and brown shades which would have looked druidic if not for the modernistic zipper at the front and machine made stiches. He was enormous, a behemoth of a man. Impossible height and weight. Or at least improbable for he now stood before me as real as day.
"I wouldn’t go in there quite as yet my fellow dammed man, just because your predestined for the flames doesn't mean you should rush to get there any faster."
‘Who are you? I said."
"Warren Morrison of course silly, who else would I be."
He spoke english and not with a hint of German accent, as far as I could tell he could have gotten off the same plane as myself.
I tried to get a good look at his face but the top half was obscured by a crimson hood, upon which was the symbol of the third eye.
"If you want to see inside there is a much safer way, my dear damned one, follow me."
I followed because I wanted to see inside the nightclub, because the beat drew me ever closer and because I knew that if I did not exorcise this demon and rid myself of that melody it would rid the world of me.
We went in a back way to the club, not through the front entrance like everybody else. As Warren opened the door I looked back and saw the security guard lock the front entrance from the outside after the last person had entered. I found myself in a stairway devoid of light, I could only just make out the outlines of the stairs and a door at the top of them. Warren pushed me forward and we ascended the stairs (I half stumbling) in darkness.
The door before us opened and I entered a room bathed in a weak light. On a decaying couch slumped near the door was a man with platinum blonde hair, dark sunglasses and a black beanie. He turned his head towards us as we entered, a small grin injecting some emotion into a face that looked as if its usual stance was stone cold.
Warren motions me to sit on a chair opposite the man and as soon as my flesh touches the steel of the metal the man brushes his hand through his hair, knocking a few stay blonde locks out of his face. As I await for whatever will happen next I notice that one side of the room is actually a window, overlooking the nightclub dance floor below. The man on the couch distracting me from noticing it before.
Below us people were in the full primal rage of the music. I recognized its muted sound as the opening song from Violent Melodies first EP. Without turning back from the window to look at the man I asked. "Who are you?"
I could almost sense the smirk.
"I’m the ex-lead singer from Shadows Eaten the Moon, and current lead for Violent Melodies. My name is of no importance for reasons simply beyond you my simple fan. As to the next question which is practically ready to spring from your lips - you came of your own volition. If Warren had not helped you along you would have found a way to me one way or the other. You will have noticed of course that the music that you heard throughout the cityscape has also stopped."
I hadn’t noticed, at least not consciously and I searched my memory for the time when the sounds had stopped, and came back empty handed. For a moment I felt not relieved like I should have, but lost as if I had been severed from a limb.
But only for a moment...
I turned to face him when he finished talking, as I had imagined he had a wicked grin on his face as he watched me and so he did. It wasn’t even predatory just insane.
Warren grabbed me from behind and although it was unnecessary, I was unable to resist. The nameless singer stood up and strode across the room, his eyes penetrated mine as he came to a stop just inches from my flesh.
"Not all muses are people." He drew his breath before speaking again, the air from his lungs feeling odd on my ear.
"A muse is simply the reflection of our desires embodied in an object. And in many curious things does mankind see its hopes and fears revealed. Few muses are heavenly, however, for what desires of man are exalted by God? Don’t you see? This music is a muse, one intended to inspire mankind to an all new low." Another pause and breath, sending shivers up my spine.
"Mankind needs to be brought back down to earth. It needs to realize the truth. That it is shit to be ripped apart and eaten by those who rule above and inside. That is what I am, you see, a prophet of hate as you may recall. The one who will return mankind to the primal womb of rage and disappointment and then turn it loose on itself so that others may feed on their blood letting."
This time I managed to suppress my shudder and ask him a question.
"What others?"
Another smirk."Show him Ellison". I am turned if by another's hand or my own inclination I do not know, to face the window overlooking the dance floor. Below us a multitude of people are in a frenzy with the music, at first this is but a metaphor but then the music changes. The nameless singer whispers in my ear.
"This is from the new album." Then he puts his hands over my ears. I can’t hear, but I can see. The frenzy was but a metaphor, now it is real. First the people on the dance floor just start twitching at random parts of their bodies, then a few fall over while others leap onto them. The people start tearing into each other, first against skin, then bone, then flesh, finally organ. Gore spills onto the stage, and some start to devour it.
Finally it stops and only five are left standing, each glaring at one of the others from across the dance floor. The hands are removed from my ears and I hear no music. Ellison and the nameless one look exhilarated by the performance below them.
"The five that are left have proven their worth, their minds will now become thrones of those who rule inside. Normally this process would take much longer, but we can speed up the process now thanks to our new sound system". Ellison points vaguely towards the metallic monolith in the corner of the room, its dark surface punctured with neon lights and cables.
‘Why are you showing me all this?" The question is greeted with another smirk, this time by Ellison as well as the nameless man."
"You are a special guest, the voice called you from half a world away. You are different from the rest, even those that survive can only be used as temporary shells for the children of those who rule inside. Your mind, body and soul can be the throne of something much greater, just like Ellison and I."
"I'm not sure I want that -- no I'm sure I do not!" My voice is little more than a whisper now, both of us have gone quiet and I don't know why.
"But can’t you see how happy they are?"
I turn to look down upon the dance floor once again, the five who survived now start to fall to the ground screaming. Slowly their heads grow in size, swelling and pulsating. Their veins pushed to the outer limits of the skin and then out of that too. Blood starts to rush down their faces mixed with a yellowish puss and other foul liquids. Slowly their heads come apart and before I look away I see a tentacle not unlike an octopus slipping around inside one of their skulls.
"This can only occur if you wish it -- I repeat -- only if you wish it."
He places a CD case in my hand, the words Violent Melodies and Hate Gospel printed upon it’s front.
"You will come back to us one day. I will promise you that."
It’s been five years since I left Berlin and returned to my place of birth. Five years since I dropped out of university for I was unable to deal with the terrors that haunted me at night. I sought solace by running away to the edges of civilisation. All in the while realizing that the beast at the heart of the modern world was far more frightening than anything that the archaic barbarianism of old could unleash. But still even here some things follow me. Sometimes I see them on market streets. Strange men hooded and cloaked who watch my steps and pierce me with their eyes.
And sometimes my mind goes over those words spoken to me in Berlin and when I am fired from another shitty job or find myself eating cold beans for dinner the words he spoke to me echo through my mind: "You will come back to us child, one day...
If mankind is dammed then isn't the only way out to stop being human? I have pondered that since and the thought haunts me to this day..
At first I ignored the message and the strange stirring in my heart that accompanied it after I had finished reading. I went back to University and tried to find some more part-time work but always there lingered some sense of foreboding. One day I turned up to the university lecture room only to feel suddenly ill. Every job interview I went to was futile and unsuccessful and my friends found themselves uneasy in my presence. I began to spend long hours wandering about, taking walks all around the city, even during the heaviest down pour. Then I got sick with a mysterious virus that seemed to linger on.
Within time, I started listening to the blank disc again. The voices had returned and although still uninterpretable were growing louder and increasing in quantity. Eventually I began to hear the noises or voices- whatever it was, everywhere and anywhere. They seemed to fuse to the noise of the city itself and only I could hear them.
Finally I begged my sister for the cash I needed. I told her that I was chasing after some girl or some other shit like that.
I had fled to where civilisation melts with chaos. But to be honest I can’t tell the difference anymore, for the horrors of the urban sprawl are just as terrifying as those of the empty township. From Mexico City do I write this tale, and it is here that things get truly weird. I thought I would warn you. Warn you to stop reading to go back to your sheltered lives of security and safety for as long as you can, for even now I am unsure that mankind can stop what is coming. The story must go on however, there must be an ending. Yes, in time all must come to an end.
I arrived in Berlin during June. I can’t remember exactly when anymore, time is (at least to me) becoming more flexible and so less real. It was raining, that I remember clearly, thick and oily it was and it seemed to pollute everything. The clouds above hung heavy and always had more to unleash.
As soon as I left the plane I could feel a vibration go through me. It spread up my feet and tapped into my spine. I just followed the beat, even while a part of my mind screamed not to.
As I approached the train station near the airport, the floor felt as though it was trembling with the unrecognisable noise. The drumming (or what I now thought was drumming, or at least best described as such) brought me underground and onto one of the trains. It kept me on the train, passing through endless corridors of ancient railroad track, until we got to the second last stop.
It was a particularly seedy looking station, all moss and broken tiles but the call beckoned me onto the station platform. I walked up a skeletal corpse of a staircase and into the Berlin streets above.
It was then that the noise started to become a melody. Haunting and ethereal with an undercurrent of something else - hatred. And as I entered the Berlin streets (the buildings hugging close to me, as if to embrace), I found the source of the melody.
It was a nightclub.
Crammed in-between a seedy looking bar and an adult bookstore, the place was called The Equinox and as far as I was concerned this was the heart of a heartless world. From out of its crudely cut entrance (purposely I presume to give it an air of primal danger) came the beat that had ensnared me since landing in Berlin and whose echo I had heard in far off Australia.
Now I was at the source, and I had no idea of what to do.
It was then that I felt a hand clasp my shoulder, temporarily distracting me from the unnatural composition. He was dressed in an array of grey, green and brown shades which would have looked druidic if not for the modernistic zipper at the front and machine made stiches. He was enormous, a behemoth of a man. Impossible height and weight. Or at least improbable for he now stood before me as real as day.
"I wouldn’t go in there quite as yet my fellow dammed man, just because your predestined for the flames doesn't mean you should rush to get there any faster."
‘Who are you? I said."
"Warren Morrison of course silly, who else would I be."
He spoke english and not with a hint of German accent, as far as I could tell he could have gotten off the same plane as myself.
I tried to get a good look at his face but the top half was obscured by a crimson hood, upon which was the symbol of the third eye.
"If you want to see inside there is a much safer way, my dear damned one, follow me."
I followed because I wanted to see inside the nightclub, because the beat drew me ever closer and because I knew that if I did not exorcise this demon and rid myself of that melody it would rid the world of me.
We went in a back way to the club, not through the front entrance like everybody else. As Warren opened the door I looked back and saw the security guard lock the front entrance from the outside after the last person had entered. I found myself in a stairway devoid of light, I could only just make out the outlines of the stairs and a door at the top of them. Warren pushed me forward and we ascended the stairs (I half stumbling) in darkness.
The door before us opened and I entered a room bathed in a weak light. On a decaying couch slumped near the door was a man with platinum blonde hair, dark sunglasses and a black beanie. He turned his head towards us as we entered, a small grin injecting some emotion into a face that looked as if its usual stance was stone cold.
Warren motions me to sit on a chair opposite the man and as soon as my flesh touches the steel of the metal the man brushes his hand through his hair, knocking a few stay blonde locks out of his face. As I await for whatever will happen next I notice that one side of the room is actually a window, overlooking the nightclub dance floor below. The man on the couch distracting me from noticing it before.
Below us people were in the full primal rage of the music. I recognized its muted sound as the opening song from Violent Melodies first EP. Without turning back from the window to look at the man I asked. "Who are you?"
I could almost sense the smirk.
"I’m the ex-lead singer from Shadows Eaten the Moon, and current lead for Violent Melodies. My name is of no importance for reasons simply beyond you my simple fan. As to the next question which is practically ready to spring from your lips - you came of your own volition. If Warren had not helped you along you would have found a way to me one way or the other. You will have noticed of course that the music that you heard throughout the cityscape has also stopped."
I hadn’t noticed, at least not consciously and I searched my memory for the time when the sounds had stopped, and came back empty handed. For a moment I felt not relieved like I should have, but lost as if I had been severed from a limb.
But only for a moment...
I turned to face him when he finished talking, as I had imagined he had a wicked grin on his face as he watched me and so he did. It wasn’t even predatory just insane.
Warren grabbed me from behind and although it was unnecessary, I was unable to resist. The nameless singer stood up and strode across the room, his eyes penetrated mine as he came to a stop just inches from my flesh.
"Not all muses are people." He drew his breath before speaking again, the air from his lungs feeling odd on my ear.
"A muse is simply the reflection of our desires embodied in an object. And in many curious things does mankind see its hopes and fears revealed. Few muses are heavenly, however, for what desires of man are exalted by God? Don’t you see? This music is a muse, one intended to inspire mankind to an all new low." Another pause and breath, sending shivers up my spine.
"Mankind needs to be brought back down to earth. It needs to realize the truth. That it is shit to be ripped apart and eaten by those who rule above and inside. That is what I am, you see, a prophet of hate as you may recall. The one who will return mankind to the primal womb of rage and disappointment and then turn it loose on itself so that others may feed on their blood letting."
This time I managed to suppress my shudder and ask him a question.
"What others?"
Another smirk."Show him Ellison". I am turned if by another's hand or my own inclination I do not know, to face the window overlooking the dance floor. Below us a multitude of people are in a frenzy with the music, at first this is but a metaphor but then the music changes. The nameless singer whispers in my ear.
"This is from the new album." Then he puts his hands over my ears. I can’t hear, but I can see. The frenzy was but a metaphor, now it is real. First the people on the dance floor just start twitching at random parts of their bodies, then a few fall over while others leap onto them. The people start tearing into each other, first against skin, then bone, then flesh, finally organ. Gore spills onto the stage, and some start to devour it.
Finally it stops and only five are left standing, each glaring at one of the others from across the dance floor. The hands are removed from my ears and I hear no music. Ellison and the nameless one look exhilarated by the performance below them.
"The five that are left have proven their worth, their minds will now become thrones of those who rule inside. Normally this process would take much longer, but we can speed up the process now thanks to our new sound system". Ellison points vaguely towards the metallic monolith in the corner of the room, its dark surface punctured with neon lights and cables.
‘Why are you showing me all this?" The question is greeted with another smirk, this time by Ellison as well as the nameless man."
"You are a special guest, the voice called you from half a world away. You are different from the rest, even those that survive can only be used as temporary shells for the children of those who rule inside. Your mind, body and soul can be the throne of something much greater, just like Ellison and I."
"I'm not sure I want that -- no I'm sure I do not!" My voice is little more than a whisper now, both of us have gone quiet and I don't know why.
"But can’t you see how happy they are?"
I turn to look down upon the dance floor once again, the five who survived now start to fall to the ground screaming. Slowly their heads grow in size, swelling and pulsating. Their veins pushed to the outer limits of the skin and then out of that too. Blood starts to rush down their faces mixed with a yellowish puss and other foul liquids. Slowly their heads come apart and before I look away I see a tentacle not unlike an octopus slipping around inside one of their skulls.
"This can only occur if you wish it -- I repeat -- only if you wish it."
He places a CD case in my hand, the words Violent Melodies and Hate Gospel printed upon it’s front.
"You will come back to us one day. I will promise you that."
It’s been five years since I left Berlin and returned to my place of birth. Five years since I dropped out of university for I was unable to deal with the terrors that haunted me at night. I sought solace by running away to the edges of civilisation. All in the while realizing that the beast at the heart of the modern world was far more frightening than anything that the archaic barbarianism of old could unleash. But still even here some things follow me. Sometimes I see them on market streets. Strange men hooded and cloaked who watch my steps and pierce me with their eyes.
And sometimes my mind goes over those words spoken to me in Berlin and when I am fired from another shitty job or find myself eating cold beans for dinner the words he spoke to me echo through my mind: "You will come back to us child, one day...
If mankind is dammed then isn't the only way out to stop being human? I have pondered that since and the thought haunts me to this day..
Violent Melodies pt 1
I wrote this story during July of 2008 and it appeared in Horror Bound Online Magazine Volume 1 Issue 1 (which can be found here: http://www.horrorbound.com/readarticle.php?article_id=20) during the same month.
Our hearts and minds are like islands scattered upon the sea of consciousness. Each one jutting out of the watery depths of the imagination and into the open reality above. I fear, however, that the tides are turning in my mind and that as the water level rises, my heart and mind may be lost in the immeasurable depths of an insane and chaotic tempest. Constantly the music reverberates throughout my mind, it's sickening melodies and bestial undercurrents. I have destroyed the disc, the cover, but still those sounds call out to me, begging me to pick up an instrument and give them birth again.
So here I will write down what I can, what I should. For there is such a thing as forbidden knowledge, my dear friend, and I write this only to help arm you with the tools to defend yourself and others without crippling what sanity you may have.
Maybe it is all in vain, the voices could have called out to others and the sounds may have found birth once again in the barrens of Mexico City or the seedy underground of Berlin. I will, however, do what I must. What I can to arm the present and the future against the past.
I first came across the obscure underground metal band Violent Melodies soon after I left high school. I had been educated in what most would call a ‘working class environment’ which although sometimes hard was better than falling in with the other class, collaborating, middle class assholes that filled up our local selective ‘public’ school. It was here that I first came across heavy metal and all its wonderful spawn of children. The bestial growls and furious blast beats of death metal. The soaring guitar harmonies of power metal and the twisted logic of metal’s industrial strand. All filled me with a sense that there were others out there like me, people who where strange and didn't feel guilty about it.
As I left high school managing to just secure acceptance for an arts/education degree at university, I became intrigued with a band called Shadows Eaten the Moon. It combined opera, death metal and traditional metal like another one of my favourite bands - Therion. It did so in far more a cohesive and odd manner. Unlike the over the top occult and mythological inspired lyrics of Therion, Shadows Eaten the Moon wrote short songs, that although on a first listen appeared to be simple songs, upon a closer listen, proved to be far more dense.
During the holiday period before I was to start my studies, I got wind that Shadows was coming to Australia for a once only tour.
The stage was like a rotting womb, preparing for the birth of some monstrous deity. Its father obviously some demonic force from the mad spaces in-between stars. My hands shook with anticipation and just as I thought this odd I looked around to see five hundred other wide-eyed metal heads doing the same. All of us, waiting with our minds going over our favourite songs, praying to whatever ancient power we believe in, that they would open with our most beloved anthem.
Suddenly the murky blackness of the stage is penetrated by a figure cloaked in varying shades of gray. The curtains fall apart and with a great howl devoid of any humanity the concert begins.
The concert becomes a blur of images and sounds, the chords that cut like knives into your brain. The furious head banging of the crowd with the screams of the front man who has always remained nameless and faceless to fans and critics alike. His features obscured by a hood and Middle eastern style scarf. It was half way through the third song that everything changed.
I remember that it was the song Capital Punishment from their debut album Love Isn’t Anything But Sex Misspelled. The lead guitarist, a Swiss man by the name of Liber who had the appearance of a prehistoric cult leader crossed with some kind of possessed bear, had just reached the end of his solo. Then I heard the shots. We all heard the shots.
Liber was dead. The guitarist next to him whose name changed with each album was dead. The drummer fell to the floor dazed and confused while the bassist fled. Only the nameless, faceless vocalist remained on stage and in his hand a sliver revolver that I could only guess had been previously hidden somewhere in the folds of his cloak.
"I am a prophet, and my gospel is that of hate. I will reveal myself in time, to those who know the truth."
He smiled and then casually walked backstage. No one stopped him. No one did anything for a few breathless moments until anarchy kicked in, but by that time the nameless, faceless, vocalist was long gone.
That was the last I heard about Shadows Eaten the Moon for a while. There were many rumours about what had happened, featuring everything from demonic possession to temporary insanity. Ultimately it didn't really matter that much. It was an odd mystery which both frightened and perplexed me but soon my part-time holiday work distracted me.
The holiday work was to help pay for my university fees and whatever extra financial considerations I might find myself in. The work was simply manual labour in a fish food warehouse squished in-between an industrial and suburban area. Here I made friends with another head banger and fellow working class, public school educated, outcast. It was he who introduced me to Violent Melodies. The lead singer claimed to be the old lead singer of Shadows Eaten the Moon who had escaped to the backwoods of Europe in order to escape police investigation. There he had forged a new band out of the mess of outcasts, vagabonds and cutthroats that he found himself with. I was given the bands first EP featuring two thirty minute songs and called "The Rising and Falling Force of Devastation." It helped me break the cloak of boredom that had threatened to strangle me at my new workplace and filled me with conversations to have with my fellow worker.
Several months later I had left the warehouse for university, although I still stayed in touch with my fellow Violent Melodies fan by creating the first Australian fan website for the band with him. Through this we avowed to show the world the greatness that was this band, taking up the banner of Shadows Eaten the Moon but taking their sound into new and far more terrible nightmarish realms.
Both of us prayed for a live tour down under. Our prayers went unanswered, but our fan site grew.
More and more people came to find Violent Melodies and became entranced by their music. Half way through my first semester we got wind of the second EP release date. It came via the internet which is always of course a little dodgy but this time the email came from someone we thought we could trust. Warren Morrison owner of the cult underground music studio that created not only Violent Melodies first EP but also all of Shadows Eaten the Moon material as well as other strange and nocturnal bands of the no limited notoriety.
It read like this:
Dear fellow worshippers of the Night,
I am please to inform you, as well as every other major Violent Melodies fan site that the second EP will be released in one month. It will go under the name Prelude. It will be fairly short as it is in reality just the opening to the much larger first full length album that will be released later in the year. This album is to be named Hate Gospel.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Morrison
At first we thought it a fake and then just as he had said the EP was released.
The message may not have been a fake but we were sure the EP was. It was for all intents of purpose a blank disc. Two hours of nothing but silence.
Soon the mid-year holidays where upon us and my rage against Violent Melodies started to waiver. It became the general mood that the disc was the studio’s cruel joke or maybe even the band's itself.
That's what we all thought until when playing the music on random the second EP came on and I heard something. It was little more than a whisper really, a few quick syllables that I couldn't make out. I turned up my speakers to full volume but still couldn’t make out what was being said. Then I rang up one of my old friends who worked as a roadie for some minor league power metal band and asked him for some louder equipment.
When we hooked up the sound to his system, we couldn’t hear anything. The voice or whatever it was, was gone. My friend shook his head and left, I soon followed suit.
My days grew filled with disappointment and my co-creator of the Australian Violent Melodies fan site soon lost interest. I too was losing interest in the band, although every now and again I would listen over the blank disc trying to find those unusual noises.
A couple of months later just as I was looking over my bills and considering taking down the Violent Melodies fan site, I received another email.
"I know that you have heard the sounds, my fellow dammed man. If you want any chance of salvation -- come to us. Take a plane to Berlin and I will be waiting. And not waiting in vain I hope."
Yours sincerely,
Warren Morrison
Our hearts and minds are like islands scattered upon the sea of consciousness. Each one jutting out of the watery depths of the imagination and into the open reality above. I fear, however, that the tides are turning in my mind and that as the water level rises, my heart and mind may be lost in the immeasurable depths of an insane and chaotic tempest. Constantly the music reverberates throughout my mind, it's sickening melodies and bestial undercurrents. I have destroyed the disc, the cover, but still those sounds call out to me, begging me to pick up an instrument and give them birth again.
So here I will write down what I can, what I should. For there is such a thing as forbidden knowledge, my dear friend, and I write this only to help arm you with the tools to defend yourself and others without crippling what sanity you may have.
Maybe it is all in vain, the voices could have called out to others and the sounds may have found birth once again in the barrens of Mexico City or the seedy underground of Berlin. I will, however, do what I must. What I can to arm the present and the future against the past.
I first came across the obscure underground metal band Violent Melodies soon after I left high school. I had been educated in what most would call a ‘working class environment’ which although sometimes hard was better than falling in with the other class, collaborating, middle class assholes that filled up our local selective ‘public’ school. It was here that I first came across heavy metal and all its wonderful spawn of children. The bestial growls and furious blast beats of death metal. The soaring guitar harmonies of power metal and the twisted logic of metal’s industrial strand. All filled me with a sense that there were others out there like me, people who where strange and didn't feel guilty about it.
As I left high school managing to just secure acceptance for an arts/education degree at university, I became intrigued with a band called Shadows Eaten the Moon. It combined opera, death metal and traditional metal like another one of my favourite bands - Therion. It did so in far more a cohesive and odd manner. Unlike the over the top occult and mythological inspired lyrics of Therion, Shadows Eaten the Moon wrote short songs, that although on a first listen appeared to be simple songs, upon a closer listen, proved to be far more dense.
During the holiday period before I was to start my studies, I got wind that Shadows was coming to Australia for a once only tour.
The stage was like a rotting womb, preparing for the birth of some monstrous deity. Its father obviously some demonic force from the mad spaces in-between stars. My hands shook with anticipation and just as I thought this odd I looked around to see five hundred other wide-eyed metal heads doing the same. All of us, waiting with our minds going over our favourite songs, praying to whatever ancient power we believe in, that they would open with our most beloved anthem.
Suddenly the murky blackness of the stage is penetrated by a figure cloaked in varying shades of gray. The curtains fall apart and with a great howl devoid of any humanity the concert begins.
The concert becomes a blur of images and sounds, the chords that cut like knives into your brain. The furious head banging of the crowd with the screams of the front man who has always remained nameless and faceless to fans and critics alike. His features obscured by a hood and Middle eastern style scarf. It was half way through the third song that everything changed.
I remember that it was the song Capital Punishment from their debut album Love Isn’t Anything But Sex Misspelled. The lead guitarist, a Swiss man by the name of Liber who had the appearance of a prehistoric cult leader crossed with some kind of possessed bear, had just reached the end of his solo. Then I heard the shots. We all heard the shots.
Liber was dead. The guitarist next to him whose name changed with each album was dead. The drummer fell to the floor dazed and confused while the bassist fled. Only the nameless, faceless vocalist remained on stage and in his hand a sliver revolver that I could only guess had been previously hidden somewhere in the folds of his cloak.
"I am a prophet, and my gospel is that of hate. I will reveal myself in time, to those who know the truth."
He smiled and then casually walked backstage. No one stopped him. No one did anything for a few breathless moments until anarchy kicked in, but by that time the nameless, faceless, vocalist was long gone.
That was the last I heard about Shadows Eaten the Moon for a while. There were many rumours about what had happened, featuring everything from demonic possession to temporary insanity. Ultimately it didn't really matter that much. It was an odd mystery which both frightened and perplexed me but soon my part-time holiday work distracted me.
The holiday work was to help pay for my university fees and whatever extra financial considerations I might find myself in. The work was simply manual labour in a fish food warehouse squished in-between an industrial and suburban area. Here I made friends with another head banger and fellow working class, public school educated, outcast. It was he who introduced me to Violent Melodies. The lead singer claimed to be the old lead singer of Shadows Eaten the Moon who had escaped to the backwoods of Europe in order to escape police investigation. There he had forged a new band out of the mess of outcasts, vagabonds and cutthroats that he found himself with. I was given the bands first EP featuring two thirty minute songs and called "The Rising and Falling Force of Devastation." It helped me break the cloak of boredom that had threatened to strangle me at my new workplace and filled me with conversations to have with my fellow worker.
Several months later I had left the warehouse for university, although I still stayed in touch with my fellow Violent Melodies fan by creating the first Australian fan website for the band with him. Through this we avowed to show the world the greatness that was this band, taking up the banner of Shadows Eaten the Moon but taking their sound into new and far more terrible nightmarish realms.
Both of us prayed for a live tour down under. Our prayers went unanswered, but our fan site grew.
More and more people came to find Violent Melodies and became entranced by their music. Half way through my first semester we got wind of the second EP release date. It came via the internet which is always of course a little dodgy but this time the email came from someone we thought we could trust. Warren Morrison owner of the cult underground music studio that created not only Violent Melodies first EP but also all of Shadows Eaten the Moon material as well as other strange and nocturnal bands of the no limited notoriety.
It read like this:
Dear fellow worshippers of the Night,
I am please to inform you, as well as every other major Violent Melodies fan site that the second EP will be released in one month. It will go under the name Prelude. It will be fairly short as it is in reality just the opening to the much larger first full length album that will be released later in the year. This album is to be named Hate Gospel.
Yours sincerely,
Warren Morrison
At first we thought it a fake and then just as he had said the EP was released.
The message may not have been a fake but we were sure the EP was. It was for all intents of purpose a blank disc. Two hours of nothing but silence.
Soon the mid-year holidays where upon us and my rage against Violent Melodies started to waiver. It became the general mood that the disc was the studio’s cruel joke or maybe even the band's itself.
That's what we all thought until when playing the music on random the second EP came on and I heard something. It was little more than a whisper really, a few quick syllables that I couldn't make out. I turned up my speakers to full volume but still couldn’t make out what was being said. Then I rang up one of my old friends who worked as a roadie for some minor league power metal band and asked him for some louder equipment.
When we hooked up the sound to his system, we couldn’t hear anything. The voice or whatever it was, was gone. My friend shook his head and left, I soon followed suit.
My days grew filled with disappointment and my co-creator of the Australian Violent Melodies fan site soon lost interest. I too was losing interest in the band, although every now and again I would listen over the blank disc trying to find those unusual noises.
A couple of months later just as I was looking over my bills and considering taking down the Violent Melodies fan site, I received another email.
"I know that you have heard the sounds, my fellow dammed man. If you want any chance of salvation -- come to us. Take a plane to Berlin and I will be waiting. And not waiting in vain I hope."
Yours sincerely,
Warren Morrison
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